Cleaning Up
by spuffyduds
Summary: Between seasons 3 and 4, while Angel's at the bottom of the briny deep, Wes struggles with his role as Justine's jailer.


Justine's room may be soundproof, but it is not, evidently, smellproof.

Lilah wrinkles her nose, stops what she's doing.

"Don't stop," he says, and silently curses himself--he's just guaranteed that she'll stop for a good, long while.

"You have a busted sewer line, Mr. Wyndham-Pryce?" she says. "Or do you just keep a sewer entrance open for your boss? Oh, wait..." she smiles. "Your boss is _missing_ and presumed _dust_, isn't he?"

"How could you forget?" he says, and settles in for a long stretch of taunting, trying to ignore the cool air on his skin where her warm mouth had been.

Later, when she's gone, he watches her car lights leave his driveway and disappear up the street. He always does that--he wouldn't put it past her to sneak back in the house, probably expecting him to be up to something on the computer. She wouldn't suspect this, he thinks, opening up Justine's room. Wouldn't suspect it of me, of the Good Guy--it's a Wolfram and Hart sort of thing to do.

Justine's curled up in the corner, glaring at him. He'd had to chain her manacles to a metal stake in the floor last week, after she rushed him when he opened the door. Not that she was a real threat, not without a weapon--but he doesn't fancy explaining scratches and bruises to Lilah. He has a feeling that she keeps careful track of the ones she makes herself.

"Is it time for my swill?" Justine says. He ignores her--he actually feeds her very well, the same meals he eats. "Or, oh, let me guess, it's another round of 'Where's my boss?' Well, guess what!" she yells. "I still _don't fucking know_!"

He doesn't even bother explaining. He unchains her and pulls her by the manacles over to his bed. He's just thinking of the bed leg as a convenient place to attach the handcuffs while he cleans up her cell--his stomach turns over when he notices a flash of fear in her eyes. "Calm down," he says, "I'm not going to..." and stops. What can he say to a woman he's had in handcuffs, in a hidden cell, for three weeks? "I mean you no harm?" "Golly, I wouldn't do that?" "I'm one of the good guys?"

He shuts up, cuffs her to the bed leg, goes to his tiny kitchen to get bleach and water and rags. He dumps Justine's bucket into his toilet...and yes, he had let that go a little too long. He disinfects and deodorizes her room (her _cell_, he reminds himself) and fetches her an extra layer of bedding, to make up for...something. For any of it.

He's standing there in the cell, damp rag in hand, and realizes that he's trying to think of something else he can do, some reason to delay putting her back in. Because it's good to have another human in his room, even one who hates him, who says the most vicious things she can think of and tries to swing at him whenever he gets near. Throw in a few angry orgasms and that would describe Lilah, too...apparently I have a _type_, he thinks, and laughs a little, and then he can't stop laughing for a while. It must be the bleach fumes.

He stops when the laughing hurts his throat. It doesn't take much, these days. He puts his supplies away, goes to put her back in--but she's looking at him differently. Not pleasantly, but the way you'd look at someone you found only mildly repulsive.

"Are you okay?" she says. She looks like she might actually be slightly interested in his reply. Stockholm sydrome, he thinks. Her fate is so completely in my hands that she's started to like me a bit in self-defence. Or maybe he's deluding himself, a slaveowner convinced that his slave is growing fond of him. What would you call that, he wonders...Dixie syndrome?

"I'll be fine when you tell me where Angel is," he says, and she rolls her eyes. But when he reaches for her cuffs she touches the inside of his wrist with one finger, very gently, far from the usual attempt to swing at him or bite. He gasps--it's such a soft touch, and the spot seems so...personal, intimate, which makes no sense, one's wrist is exposed all the time, it's hardly--oh, do be quiet, brain.

Justine smiles just a tiny bit at the gasp, and he's figured it out, now--it's a plot, of course. She's hoping to get his defences down, get him to take the cuffs off, bash him over the head with his bedside lamp or some such. Poor stupid girl, he thinks. She's merely an enthusiastic amateur at the double cross. He's had months of practice at it. All that time plotting to snatch Angel's baby, all those nights spent coming up with elaborate plans to steal his best friend's girlfriend. Knowing he'd never implement _those_ plans...oh, I'll snatch a baby, but girlfriend stealing isn't sporting, is it? Not how they do it at Eton...

He really, really wishes he could get that mocking voice in his head to shut up for a while.

And Justine keeps stroking, just that one finger on his wrist, the skin's so thin there and it feels like his pulse is leaping up to meet her touch, speeding up, getting louder. He can feel his heartbeat inside his ears.

If her room--her cell--wasn't soundproof she'd know this was bad timing, he thinks. You don't try to seduce someone who's just had hours of sex, you wait until Lilah hasn't shown up for days, she does that and she doesn't call because calling would mean that this thing...what they're doing...means...something. You wait until it's been days and Wesley is taking the photo out of his nightstand drawer, the picture of Fred and Gunn on the night they went to the ballet, Fred with her huge eyes and her little birdlike collarbones, her glow and her enormous smile. The glow and the smile had confused Wes, that night. He'd misinterpreted.

He takes the picture out, those nights when Lilah's disappeared for too long, and he hates himself, looks at Fred glowing and grinning and hates himself, jacks off and hates himself. And while he's doing all that he has his thumb over the other part of the picture, covering Gunn's happy face, covering the arm that Gunn has draped over Fred's tiny shoulders. But when he's done he makes himself look at that too, while he cleans himself up. He uses a scratchy washrag and cold water and looks at Gunn, and tells himself, "Charles. _She_ calls him Charles."

Sometimes he makes himself say it out loud.

He snaps back to the here and now, and Justine is still touching him, making tiny circles with her thumb on his wrist, slowly. And he notices that maybe her timing isn't so bad after all, because his cock is stirring, starting to ache like it's been weeks instead of an hour. And he could do this, of course he could, he's older and wilier and thinking six steps ahead of this girl, he wouldn't even have to take the cuffs off, would he?

But he won't. He won't because...because he's only keeping her here to help Angel, to find Angel, to make things right, he's not going...that would be rape even if she's trying to talk him into it because she doesn't really want it, she's just...And then his father is in his head, smiling that twinkly charming smile that he only gets when he is about to point out how immensely stupid Wesley is. He smiles hard at Wesley and says, "Think, son...if she's willing to fuck you to try to get out of here, then obviously she thinks being kept here is worse than fucking you, right? So, if you've already done worse..." he shrugs elegantly and goes away, leaving Wes standing there confused. I don't believe I've ever even _imagined_ him saying fuck before, he thinks.

And Justine has pulled his hand to her lips now, she puts out her tongue and licks just the tip of his little finger. Her tongue is pointy and small and warm, and he pulls his hand away sharply and steps back, because he is not doing this, because he is a little confused but he's still on the side of the angels or at least of the Angel, because he is still a good man, a decent man. Not doing this, he thinks, and touches his fingers back to her lips.


End file.
